Chloe (22 page)

‘Am I a distraction? Ought I to go?' she asked tentatively, hoping that he would protest.

‘I've been up since the scrake and got nowhere by myself so you might as well stay. If you want.'

‘OK,' said Chloë, ‘if you'd like me to.'

Ronan grunted with a slight toss of his head and continued his journey around the rock. He walked clockwise and then anticlockwise and stopped at practically all the points of an imaginary compass, squinting at the light, scrutinizing the great bulk before him. He sighed and heaved regularly and stood up and down on his tiptoes, a feat Chloë quite admired considering his caked, steel-capped workman's boots. She stayed awhile, hoping her presence might liberate the pent-up artistic genius still locked within the swaying, procrastinating, gorgeous Ronan. It seemed she made little difference and, after sitting silent and reverential for a good hour, she crept away.

Chloë visited Ronan daily for he rarely came to the house.

‘'Tis the dwelling of my patron and I have no place there,' he had said darkly. The sentiment Chloë understood; its vocabulary and delivery, however, she found affected and daft. She repeated it to Mr and Mrs Andrews.

‘Silly bugger's a little too far up his own backside, I'd say,' considered Mr Andrews.

‘Gracious!' added Mrs Andrews. ‘It's trouble enough keeping Tom Gainsborough
out
of our house – to say nothing of the chambermaid's clothing!'

‘I wish Ronan shared Gainsborough's predilection,' Chloë said to them, putting a hand forlornly to her breast. ‘I sit on my bucket in his studio for an hour a day but all he does is sigh at his rock.'

‘While you have your eye on his cock!'

‘Mrs Andrews!' declared Chloë, blushing.

‘Decorum, dear,' said Mr Andrews quietly.

It was true. Each day Chloë would visit Ronan and sit motionless with her ankles crossed daintily, trying hard to be alluring in her silence as well as in a slight parting of her lips any time Ronan should look at her. She stole cautious gazes at him as he paced and sighed. A glimpse of a tuft of chest hair at the dip of his neck made her quiver. Secretly, she would urge him to crouch, which afforded both of them refreshing viewpoints and a new, interesting perspective. If facing her, his boiler suit would cling to the muscles of his thighs; turned away from her and the material hugged his buttocks and stretched taut across the breadth of his shoulders.

When his brow furrowed with the effort of being a sculptor, Chloë observed a darkness cloud his eyes into velvet navy. When the sun caught them, or when inspiration alighted, she saw how their blueness reflected the sky and spoke of the sea. Sometimes he rolled his sleeves above his elbows. Chloë thought his elbows quite divine and his forearms worthy of Shakespearian depiction. On days when it was particularly warm, he unbuttoned his boiler suit and rolled it down, tying the sleeves around his hips. A T-shirt, meanwhile, delineated the muscles of his chest, proclaimed his trim stomach and afforded a good airing of his biceps, all of which delighted Chloë.

Spring was creeping into summer. She had arrived when the land breathed a pale, gentle green; now it was awash with emerald. The days were milder earlier and stayed warmer later, allowing Chloë to progress into softer, less substantial clothing. Once or twice she remarked to herself how Carl had desired her in spite of spattered jodhpurs, a prickly Fair Isle jumper and a grey thermal vest. Ronan, however, took no notice of her silk shirt tucked, as she thought, sexily into her jeans and unbuttoned a little on each journey from Gus's study to Ronan's studio.

Gus approved of her visits.

‘Artists,' he justified, as if they were a different race, ‘have low resistance against melancholia. A little chivvying is a very good idea. After all, the Trail opens in little over a month!'

So Chloë sits on her bucket and waits for signs and signals from Ronan. She is pleased that, over the course of a week or two, he has modified his grunt on her arrival, to a nod of the head, and now a relaxed ‘Hi, there!' She says very little, certainly never interrupts him with a goodbye. The limestone is changing yet she is never there to witness it. Though Ronan broods on the fact that the form remains locked within the rock, that his tools are useless until his mind releases his hands, each day Chloë finds the stone has become smoother, a rhythm more pronounced. Has Ronan imposed this shape on to the rock, or did it exist already and he has merely uncovered it? She likes the way an inanimate object can change and grow. It has started to spiral, like a primeval mollusc, like a great python. It seems to live. Its surface is now smooth and often warm to the touch. And yet it is a lump of rock.

She remains silent though, for she believes that is what Ronan wishes, and anyway, she is still shy of her opinion.

G
us was in a foul mood.

‘Where the hell is Chloë?' he yelled in the empty study. ‘Less than a fortnight to go until we're on the map and she announces she's leaving next week!' Tutting despairingly, he hammered on the window to dislodge the pigeons from their confabulation aboard the Antony Gormley bronze. Mary came scuttling in.

‘Did you call, Mr Halloran?'

‘No,' he said, reasserting his composure by rolling his head quickly. ‘But have you seen Chloë?'

‘Not since this morning,' Mary replied truthfully, hoping she would not be pressed further.

‘Is she with Ronan?' he asked. Mary told him she really wouldn't know, but could she get back to the kitchen, her bread was ready.

‘Ronan!'

‘Mr Halloran, morning.'

‘Seen Chloë?'

‘Not this morning.'

‘Damn!'

‘Sorry?'

‘We had, er,
words
last night.'

‘God, and if we didn't have 'em yesterday afternoon too!'

The men were silent and gazed down at the blue-black sheen of the newly polished limestone.

‘Have you decided where it should stand?' Gus asked.

‘No, I can't seem to – half of me thinks the privacy of the wood, the other half craves pride of place right in the centre of the lawn! She's probably gone for a walk,' said Ronan.

‘Hmm,' murmured Gus, turning on his heels and walking away.

‘It's lunch-time, Mr Halloran,' said Mary, popping her head around the study door to find him standing by the window, hands in pockets and a pencil twizzling in his mouth.

‘Chloë?' he said through his teeth while biting hard on the pencil to keep it in place.

‘She said not to wait,' Mary trailed away, her mouth agape, suddenly horribly aware that her foot was firmly in it.

‘What?' bellowed Gus, not sure where the pencil dropped and not bothered anyway.

‘She said not to wait,' Mary repeated quietly but with no suggestion of timidity.

‘
You
said you had not seen her!' Gus growled. ‘What on earth is going on?'

Mary cleared her throat and held her head high.

‘I said I had not seen her
since this morning
.'

‘For heaven's sake, woman,' cried Gus, marching over to Mary who stood her ground.

‘I saw Chloë this morning. Poor lass. Took the Land Rover and told me not to cook for her.' Gus's eyes zipped around Mary's face while his thoughts scrambled and his mouth dried completely.

‘I reckon the girl's had enough of your barging,' called Mary over her shoulder as she left the study for the kitchen. ‘Lunch is ready, Mr Halloran.'

‘Thackeray,' said Chloë to an inquisitive rock pipit, ‘got it all wrong. The only chaos here,' she added to a boisterous guillemot, ‘is that within me.'

Chloë had the Giant's Causeway all to herself. She had parked the Land Rover appallingly in the empty car park, skirted around the visitor centre and scurried down the winding path to the bottom of the cliff and slap bang into the middle of a well remembered O level geography lesson.

Her geography teacher had described it as a ‘lunar' landscape. Thackeray, erroneously, thought it loony. Chloë thought it quite the most spectacular scene she had ever seen. The glum face she had worn on the journey, and all the previous day, at once opened out into an expansive smile. The gusts from the sea fortified her and the knowledge of Scotland just over the water was reassuring. The beauty and magnitude of the Giant's Causeway flung a neater perspective on her fraught little world. She was surrounded by the famous network of hexagonal basalt columns, some forty foot high, some a mere step; their regularity and longevity in some way giving structure to her thoughts.

Chloë searched for Jocelyn with her eyes alternately wide open and scrunched tight shut. She scoured the mayweed for her and listened hard to the fulmars and the pipits. She did not understand their language. Jocelyn, it appeared, would not be visiting today. And yet what was it that she had said in her Ireland letter?

Perhaps Chloë did not know where to look. Maybe she was not looking hard enough. Possibly, she was not quite ready to find Jocelyn. Not just yet. After all, what would she tell her? That she had given herself brazenly to a sculptor? Just because he was a sculptor, whatever that meant, and albeit one who was as pretentious as he was introverted? That she had realized her desire to become an artist's muse but in a way that appalled her? That yesterday she had insulted her host, her godmother's old friend? She'd confide in Jocelyn anon, once conclusions had been drawn, lessons learnt and decisions made.

For the first time, however, the landscape was not conspiring. It did not mirror her mood. It was, instead, an utter distraction; a sky-blue day with just the occasional vaporous cloud drifting across like a dream, the sea lapping lazily as if it were quite full but just wanted to taste the shore a little more, the sea birds carrying out their chores with chatter and aplomb. And no people. Chloë could not believe her luck for she had seen the ice-cream signs, the postcards furling forlornly in their rusting racks, she had seen the notice for the minibus to trundle the hordes down to the base of the cliff. Perhaps there was no ice-cream today and maybe the bus had broken down; no people to transport, no visitors to buy postcards.

‘Am I complaining?' chanted Chloë as she tiptoed from stack to stack. ‘I think not!'

She danced her way over those known as the Honeycomb and saluted the King and his Nobles. She laughed out loud and then giggled at hearing her own voice carried by the wind out to sea. She tried to traverse the columns solely step by precarious step but soon found that their differing heights and surfaces caused her to jig and stumble. She went in search of columns that were not hexagonal and, when she found one with eight sides and another with five, she was as thrilled as if they had been four-leaf clovers. Out of breath, she found the stacks which formed the Wishing Chair and sat awhile, breathing deeply and grinning. The sun streamed over her body and she allowed her eyes to close, to encourage memories of the previous fortnight to present themselves unhampered.

Ronan had kissed her furiously. He could not tolerate another unproductive day just pacing around his great rock and looking unconstructively at it. The form had started to swell as well as spiral, but its direction was uncertain and Ronan was damned if he knew where it was going. He knew where
he
was going to go, straight into the knickers of this affable young woman. This Chloë. Cadwallader. What a mouthful. Give me her mouth.

As she sits gazing out way beyond the sea, Chloë observes how she would have recalled her tryst with Ronan with more pleasure had not its consequence marred the memory.

Two weeks ago, Gus had gone to Belfast for a meeting with the Arts Council. He had most conveniently dropped Mary in Ballymena for a shop and an afternoon with her friends and had instructed Chloë to go directly to Ronan once she had finished the morning post.

‘I fear he's a little off schedule, don't you? I think he works better under the watchful eye of the Ballygorm Sculpture Trail's administrative assistant, don't you?'

‘Well,' faltered Chloë, not happy with the term ‘assistant', ‘he never seems to do that much while I'm actually
there
– though he has always pressed on by my next visit.'

‘Which,' said Gus making no effort to mask the irritation in his voice, ‘merely reworks my sentiments previously expressed.'

Chloë gave him a polite smile and shot daggers at him behind his back.

Gus straightened his tie, hollered for Mary and left Ballygorm for the city, saying they would not be back until late afternoon.

The first thing Chloë did, once the drone of the Jaguar had died away, was to scamper up to her room to change. It was practically June and a most appropriate day for shorts; just gone nine in the morning and the sky was utterly cloudless, the scent of summer, though faint, came in wafts. She teamed her navy shorts with a white T-shirt that had shrunk slightly in the wash and stretched across her most becomingly. A soft woollen cardigan gave the outfit a practical touch and, as she perused the ensemble in front of the tall mirror on the landing, she thought she looked rather good. Her chunky socks and suede boots the colour of butter gave the impression that her legs were slightly more svelte than they actually were. She looked robustly feminine. And felt sexy. Mrs Andrews sent her on her way with her blessing. Mr Andrews pretended not to have seen her.

Chloë had rattled through the morning's post and dealt with all matters pressing. None pressed very hard and she found herself skipping over the lawn towards Ronan's workshop within half an hour. As usual, he was engrossed and unaware of her arrival, which afforded her the chance to gaze at him as he toiled. He must have been at it for some time, for the top of his boiler suit was down and his forearms were prickled with perspiration. Oh, how Chloë could have licked them! Instead, she stayed stock-still and silent. Ronan was on one knee with his back towards her, his buttocks delineated appetizingly beneath his blue overalls. With mallet and chisel, he chinked and chipped at the rock, exhaling loudly with the effort in much the same way as a tennis player in his final set. His hair was damp and nicked itself into little curls around his neck. His T-shirt was caught taut over his shoulder-blades and stuck damply between them. Still on one knee he laid his tools down and rested his head on his arm which was pressed against the rock. Sculptor had become sculpture and it made Chloë gasp. He turned slowly towards her, his eyes were slightly bloodshot from trickles of sweat. He had not shaved.